Tag Archives: Cancun

Caribbean resorts get starring role in U.S airlines’ COVID-19 holiday playbook

By Tracy Rucinski

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. airlines are adding flights, and in some cases COVID-19 testing programs, for travel to Mexico and the Caribbean, a region central to carriers’ strategies to tap into pockets of holiday demand before a vaccine makes its way around the world.

Beachside resort destinations in areas like Cancun are the only spots that now have more flights from U.S. cities scheduled for November and December than last year, numbers from aviation data firm Cirium show.

Overall, U.S. airlines are flying about 50% less than 2019, with flights to traditional European vacation hotspots like Paris down by as much as 82% due to travel bans and quarantines.

While new revenue streams from destinations like the Caribbean will help, they won’t be enough to put airlines in the black for the year, analysts have said.

The holiday period is traditionally when airlines thrive ahead of slow months in January and February. But this year they have said they will continue to burn millions of dollars daily through the fourth quarter as they wrestle with slashed demand.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, U.S. airports saw their busiest weekend since mid-March, even after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urged Americans not to travel amid a spike in COVID-19 cases. Still, demand is down by around 60% and airlines say it’s too soon to know how Christmas travel will play out.

Still, airlines are hoping to build up a base of customers who feel comfortable about flying before a COVID-19 vaccine becomes widely available, eyeing the typically lucrative summer travel season.

More studies, including from the Harvard School of Public Health and the U.S. Department of Defense, have said the risk of COVID-19 transmission in flight is low if people wear masks.

Recent positive vaccine developments have helped reassure investors that U.S. airlines can make it through the crisis. Sector shares rose 4% on Monday and are up 23% for the month.

But the speed and depth of their recovery, particularly from higher-margin business and international travel, will determine how they cut piles of debt they took on to weather the crisis.

Airlines are trying to reboot overseas travel through bilateral bubbles – deals between countries on COVID-19 testing protocols that would replace or reduce quarantines – though programs have been slow to take off.

United Airlines last week launched a free rapid COVID-19 testing program between Newark Liberty International and London Heathrow airports, and on Monday said it was rolling out a test program for flights from U.S. energy capital Houston, Texas to 10 places in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Starting Dec. 7, passengers can take the self-collected, mail-in test 72 hours before departure for $119 to meet entry requirements at their destination.

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

Hurricane Delta weakens before landfall near Mexico’s Cancun

By Anthony Esposito

CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – Hurricane Delta rapidly lost strength before landfall near top Caribbean getaway Cancun on Wednesday, potentially saving the area’s hotels, condos and Mayan indigenous villages from an onslaught threatened when it was a menacing Category 4 storm.

Delta had weakened to Category 2 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, with winds of 110 miles per hour (175 km per hour), by the time it hit the coast close to Puerto Morelos, a fishing village popular with tourists.

Cancun scrambled to shutter shops and evacuate tourists from beach hotels on Tuesday as Delta rapidly gathered strength over the warm Caribbean and looked to be one of the strongest hurricanes to threaten Cancun in years.

Even as a weaker storm, Delta’s arrival is a blow to Mexican efforts to revive tourism in the surrounding beach-lined state of Quintana Roo, where the industry has been battered by the coronavirus pandemic.

“I want to go home, this is crazy,” said Dee Harris, a 29-year-old from Michigan who came to Cancun with his partner and had been due to leave before the storm led to the cancellation of their flight. “The vacation was good before this.”

Delta is also disrupting the oil industry, with companies shutting down offshore production platforms and withdrawing workers.

Peak sustained winds of 84 mph (135 km/h) were recorded at a weather station in Cancun, which is about 24 miles (38.5 km) from snorkeling spot Puerto Morelos close to the eye of the storm.

Delta was expected to pass through Quintana Roo in 10-14 hours, state governor Carlos Joaquin said.

“Hopefully, that speed means it won’t do us so much damage,” Joaquin told Mexican radio.

Slow-moving hurricanes often do more destruction than those with faster lateral movement because they have more time to unleash their force on structures.

Delta is expected to lose some wind power over the peninsula before gathering strength again in the Gulf of Mexico.

On Tuesday, residents queued at supermarkets to stock up on provisions in anticipation of disruptions, while the state government readied shelters that need extra space due to coronavirus social-distancing requirements.

Officials ordered the evacuation of Cancun’s hotel zone and other coastal areas, while shop workers boarded up windows.

A hurricane watch was in place from the beach town of Tulum westwards, including Cozumel.

Water levels could rise by up to 9 feet (3 m) over normal tide conditions due to Delta, the NHC said.

The Yucatan peninsula had already taken a hit at the weekend from Hurricane Gamma, a smaller storm that damaged property and forced restaurants and other attractions to close.

(Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

Mexico to send troops to stem violence after record 25,000 murders

A soldier stands guard next to a crime scene, where men were killed inside a home by unknown assailants, in the municipality of San Nicolas de los Garza, Mexico, January 27, 2018. Picture taken January 27, 2018.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican officials said on Sunday the government was set to unleash a new wave of troops to crack down on criminal groups in regions where a surge in violence led to more than 25,000 murders last year.

National Security Commissioner Renato Sales said federal police troops will work with local officials to round up known major criminals and bolster investigations.

The aim was “to recover peace and calm for all Mexicans,” he said. He did not provide details on the number of federal police to be deployed.

More than 25,000 murders were recorded last year as rival drug gangs increasingly splintered into smaller, more blood-thirsty groups after more than a decade of a military-led campaign to battle the cartels.

Violence is a central issue ahead of the presidential election in July. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party is trailing in third place in recent polls.

Sales said federal police troops would be deployed in the states of Colima and Baja California Sur, the resort town of Cancun and the border city of Ciudad Juarez, among others. He said more details would be forthcoming within days.

Earlier this month, the United States slapped its most stringent travel warnings on the states of Colima, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Guerrero, ranking them as bad as war-ravaged Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

At least 25 people were murdered in Mexico this weekend, according to officials and local media, including nine men who were executed at a house party in a suburb of the wealthy northern industrial city of Monterrey.

Masked gunmen burst into a home in San Nicholas de los Garza as a group watched a local soccer team play on television, according to state prosecutors. Seven were killed at the scene and two more died later at a hospital.

There were a wave of attacks in night spots late Saturday and early Sunday. A group of armed men killed three people in a bar in the resort city of Cancun, a Chilean tourist was killed in the Pacific beach resort of Acapulco, and two more were killed in a bar in the capital of Veracruz state.

Six more were killed in the border city of Ciudad Juarez and four more died in the border state of Tamaulipas, where at least 10 were killed during the week at outlaw road blockades and in shootouts, local media reported.

(Reporting by Michael O’Boyle and Diego Ore; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)